Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #551 Moonlighting

Lis­ten:
MP3 One Seg­ment
REALAUDIO

NB: This stream con­tains both FTRs 551 and 552 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.
For fur­ther back­ground on the “King of Peace” con­tro­ver­sy, see:
King of Peace video, YouTube.com
“Moon Over Wash­ing­ton” by John Goren­field; The Gad­fly­er June 9, 2004

Intro­duc­tion: Sup­ple­ment­ing numer­ous pro­grams fea­tur­ing infor­ma­tion about Sun Myung Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, this broad­cast high­lights the dom­i­na­tion of the sushi indus­try in the Unit­ed States by True World Group—a Moon pro­pri­etary. Begun in the 1970’s, Moon’s seafood busi­ness is far-reach­ing and ver­ti­cal­ly-inte­grat­ed, fea­tur­ing boat man­u­fac­tur­ing and repair facil­i­ties, fish­ing fleets, stor­age and prepa­ra­tion facil­i­ties and trans­porta­tion lines. When seafood lovers indulge their taste for sushi (in Amer­i­can restau­rants, at least) they are help­ing to sup­port the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. As we have seen, the Moon group appears to be an exten­sion of the patri­ot­ic soci­eties that brought fas­cism to Japan. In addi­tion to review­ing some of the Japan­ese war crim­i­nals that played a promi­nent role in the rise of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, the pro­gram sets forth Neil Bush’s pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tion with Moon. (Neil is the broth­er of George W. Bush, and one of a num­ber of Bush fam­i­ly mem­bers who have worked with Moon’s orga­ni­za­tion in the past.) The broad­cast notes the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic phi­los­o­phy of the Moon orga­ni­za­tion and its fun­da­men­tal con­tra­dic­tion of tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can polit­i­cal val­ues.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Moon orga­ni­za­tion’s use of its mass wed­dings to skirt U.S. fish­ing reg­u­la­tions by mak­ing Japan­ese and Kore­an nation­als into U.S. cit­i­zens; True World Foods skirt­ing of FDA safe­ty stan­dards and intim­i­da­tion of FDA inspec­tors; True World Group’s com­pet­i­tive advan­tage over oth­er sushi dis­trib­u­tors, stem­ming from the fact that many of its rep­re­sen­ta­tives speak Kore­an, Japan­ese and Chinese—the native lan­guage of many first-gen­er­a­tion restau­ra­teurs; the role of Japan­ese war crim­i­nals Ryoichi Sasakawa and Yoshio Kodama in the Moon orga­ni­za­tion; the role of Kodama in the loot­ing of Asia dur­ing War World War II; the role of both Kodama and Sasakawa in the post­war recov­ery of Gold­en Lily loot; Kodama’s close rela­tion­ship to the CIA.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the Moon orga­ni­za­tion’s effec­tive dom­i­na­tion of the Sushi busi­ness in the Unit­ed States, the pro­gram access­es a very impor­tant arti­cle from The Chica­go Tri­bune. Moon’s Sushi busi­ness is promi­nent in the Chica­go mar­ket, hav­ing start­ed from hum­ble begin­nings. The oper­a­tion has grown enor­mous­ly, and has as its foun­da­tion True World Group:

“On a mis­sion from their leader, five young men arrived in Chica­go to open a lit­tle fish shop on Elston Avenue. Back then, in 1980, peo­ple of their faith were cas­ti­gat­ed as ‘Moonies’ and called cult mem­bers. Yet the Japan­ese and Amer­i­can friends worked gru­el­ing hours and slept in a com­mu­nal apart­ment as they slow­ly built the foun­da­tion of a com­mer­cial empire. They were led by the vision of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-pro­claimed mes­si­ah who sus­tained their spir­its as they played their part in ful­fill­ing the glob­al busi­ness plan he had devised. Moon found­ed his con­tro­ver­sial Uni­fi­ca­tion Church six decades ago with the procla­ma­tion that he was asked by Jesus to save human­i­ty. But he also built the empire blend­ing his con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, savvy cap­i­tal­ism and flair for spec­ta­cles such as mass wed­dings in Madi­son Square Gar­den. In a remark­able sto­ry that has gone large­ly untold, Moon and his fol­low­ers cre­at­ed an enter­prise that reaped mil­lions of dol­lars by dom­i­nat­ing one of Amer­i­ca’s trendi­est indul­gences: sushi. Today, one of those five Elston Avenue pio­neers, Takeshi Yashiro, serves as a top exec­u­tive of a sprawl­ing con­glom­er­ate that sup­plies much of the raw fish Amer­i­cans eat. Adher­ing to a plan Moon spelled out more than three decades ago in a series of ser­mons, mem­bers of his move­ment man­aged to inte­grate vir­tu­al­ly every facet of the high­ly com­pet­i­tive seafood indus­try. The Moon fol­low­ers’ seafood oper­a­tion is dri­ven by a com­mer­cial pow­er­house, known as True World Group. It builds fleets of boats, runs dozens of dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters and, each day, sup­plies most of the nation’s esti­mat­ed 9,000 sushi restau­rants.”

(“Sushi and Rev. Moon: How Amer­i­cans’ Grow­ing Appetite for Sushi Helps Sup­port the Con­tro­ver­sial Church;” by Mon­i­ca Eng, Del­roy Alexan­der and David Jack­son; Chica­go Tri­bune; 4/12/2006.)

2. As the arti­cle points out, sushi lovers are unwit­ting­ly aid­ing Moon’s orga­ni­za­tion when they indulge their taste for that cui­sine, giv­en True World’s dom­i­na­tion of the indus­try.

“Although few seafood lovers may con­sid­er they’re indi­rect­ly sup­port­ing Moon’s reli­gious move­ment, they do just that when they eat a but­tery slice of tuna or munch on a morsel of eel in many restau­rants. True World is so ubiq­ui­tous that 14 of 17 promi­nent Chica­go sushi restau­rants sur­veyed by the Tri­bune said they were sup­plied by the com­pa­ny. Over the last three decades, as Moon has faced down accu­sa­tions of brain­wash­ing fol­low­ers and per­son­al­ly prof­it­ing from the church, he and sushi have made sim­i­lar if unlike­ly jour­neys from the fringes of Amer­i­can soci­ety to the main­stream. These par­al­lel paths are not coin­ci­dence. They reflect Moon’s dream of revi­tal­iz­ing and dom­i­nat­ing the Amer­i­can fish­ing indus­try while help­ing to fund his church’s activ­i­ties.”

(Idem.)

3. Moon’s “Way of Tuna” plan was the start­ing point for the far-reach­ing, ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grat­ed com­mer­cial enter­prise that now dom­i­nates the sushi busi­ness.

“ ‘I have the entire sys­tem worked out, start­ing with boat build­ing,’ Moon said in ‘The Way of Tuna,’ a speech giv­en in 1980. ‘After we build the boats, we catch the fish and process them for the mar­ket, and then have a dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work. This is not just on the draw­ing board; I have already done it.’ In the same speech, he called him­self ‘king of the ocean.’ It proved not to be an idle boast. The busi­ness­es now employ hun­dreds, includ­ing non-church mem­bers, from the frigid waters of the Alaskan coast to the icon­ic Amer­i­can fish­ing town of Glouces­ter, Mass. Records and inter­views with church insid­ers and com­peti­tors trace how Moon and mem­bers of his move­ment car­ried out his vision. . . links between Moon’s reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion and the fish busi­ness­es are spelled out in court and gov­ern­ment records as well as in state­ments by Moon and his top church offi­cials. For one thing, Moon per­son­al­ly devised the seafood strat­e­gy, helped fund it at its out­set and served as a direc­tor of one of its ear­li­est com­pa­nies.”

(Idem.)

4. Moon’s co-min­gling of com­mer­cial and osten­si­bly non-prof­it enti­ties has led to inves­ti­ga­tions of his oper­a­tions. Note that the seafood-pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties are ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grat­ed with fish­ing fleets and ship­build­ing and repair­ing estab­lish­ments.

“Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is orga­nized under a tax-exempt non-prof­it enti­ty called The Holy Spir­it Asso­ci­a­tion for the Uni­fi­ca­tion of World Chris­tian­i­ty. The busi­ness­es are con­trolled by a sep­a­rate non-prof­it com­pa­ny called Uni­fi­ca­tion Church Inter­na­tion­al Inc., or UCI. That com­pa­ny’s con­nec­tions to Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church go deep­er than the shared name. A 1978 con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tion into Moon’s busi­ness­es con­clud­ed: ‘It was unclear whether the UCI had any inde­pen­dent func­tions oth­er than serv­ing as a finan­cial clear­ing­house for var­i­ous Moon orga­ni­za­tion sub­sidiaries and projects.’ UCI as well as its sub­sidiaries and affil­i­ates such as True World are run large­ly by church mem­bers, [Uni­fi­ca­tion Church offi­cial Phillip] Schanker said. The com­pa­nies were ‘found­ed by church mem­bers in line with Rev. Moon’s vision,’ he said. ‘It’s not coin­ci­dence.’ Some­times the links are more direct. The boat­build­ing firm US Marine Cor­po­ra­tion shares its head­quar­ters offices with the church and lists the church as its major­i­ty share­hold­er, accord­ing to cor­po­rate records.”

(Idem.)

5. Again, much of the sushi-lov­ing pub­lic is con­tribut­ing to the wel­fare of Moon’s orga­ni­za­tion. Far from being the benev­o­lent, spir­i­tu­al insti­tu­tion that is claims to be, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church actu­al­ly appears to be an exten­sion of he Japan­ese patri­ot­ic and ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties through the decades and around the world. The patri­ot­ic soci­eties paved the way for the rise of fas­cism in Japan through a cam­paign of pro­pa­gan­da and sys­tem­at­ic polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion.

“A por­tion of True World’s prof­its makes its way to the church through the lay­ers of par­ent cor­po­ra­tions, Yashiro said, adding: ‘We live to serve oth­ers, and this is how we serve by build­ing a strong busi­ness.’ Moon pre­dict­ed in 1974 that the fish­ing busi­ness would ‘lay a foun­da­tion for the future econ­o­my of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.’ In fact, while Moon and busi­ness­es affil­i­at­ed with him report­ed­ly have poured mil­lions of dol­lars into mon­ey-los­ing ven­tures includ­ing The Wash­ing­ton Times news­pa­per, the seafood ven­tures have cre­at­ed a prof­it-mak­ing infra­struc­ture that could last-and help sup­port the church-long after the 86-year-old Moon is gone.”

(Idem.)

6. Moon seed­ed his seafood busi­ness in Chicago—the orig­i­nal epi­cen­ter of True World Foods.

“Much of the foun­da­tion for that suc­cess has its roots in Chica­go. True World Foods, Yashiro’s whole­sale fish dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness spawned near Lawrence and Elston Avenues, now oper­ates from a 30,000-square-foot com­plex in Elk Grove Vil­lage. The com­pa­ny says it sup­plies hun­dreds of local sushi and fine-din­ing estab­lish­ments. Even many who might have reli­gious reser­va­tions about buy­ing from the com­pa­ny do so for one sim­ple rea­son: It depend­ably deliv­ers high-qual­i­ty sushi. ‘We try not to think of the reli­gion part,” said Haruko Ima­mu­ra, who with her hus­band runs Kat­su on West Peter­son Avenue. ‘We don’t agree with their reli­gion but it’s noth­ing to do with the busi­ness.’ Like Moon him­self, who served a 13-month prison sen­tence for tax fraud in the 1980s, the seafood com­pa­nies have at times run afoul of U.S. laws. In June 2001, True World Foods’ Kodi­ak, Alas­ka, fish pro­cess­ing com­pa­ny plead­ed guilty to a fed­er­al felony for accept­ing a load of pol­lock that exceed­ed the boat’s 300,000-pound trip lim­it. The firm was fined $150,000 and put on pro­ba­tion for five years under a plea agree­ment with pros­e­cu­tors.”

(Idem.)

7. Not every­thing is on the lev­el with True World’s oper­a­tions. Cit­ed for repeat­ed health vio­la­tions, True World’s Detroit facil­i­ty tried to bar safe­ty inspec­tors from the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion. When that failed, inspec­tors were intim­i­dat­ed.

“The com­pa­ny also has been cit­ed for san­i­ta­tion laps­es by the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion. Last year, after repeat­ed FDA inspec­tions found ‘gross unsan­i­tary con­di­tions’ at True World’s sub­ur­ban Detroit plant, the facil­i­ty man­ag­er tried to bar inspec­tors from pro­duc­tion areas and refused to pro­vide records, accord­ing to an FDA report. The plant man­ag­er told the inspec­tors that his True World super­vi­sor was ‘a great man, that he was a part of a new reli­gion, and that if we took advan­tage of him, then ‘God help you!’ Lat­er, accord­ing to that FDA report, an employ­ee wear­ing a ski mask approached one female inspec­tor, put his thumb and fore­fin­ger in the shape of a gun, point­ed at her and said: ‘You’re out of uni­form. Pow!’ Say­ing they had been ‘hin­dered, intim­i­dat­ed and threat­ened,’ the FDA inspec­tors took the unusu­al step of secur­ing a court order com­pelling True World to let them inspect the facil­i­ty. Yashiro, chief exec­u­tive of True World Foods, said in a writ­ten state­ment that the ‘iso­lat­ed instance ..... arose from a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.’ The plant is now closed; Yashiro said its oper­a­tions were con­sol­i­dat­ed into the Elk Grove Vil­lage plant in Jan­u­ary, adding: ‘We main­tain the high­est stan­dards of food safe­ty.’ ”

(Idem.)

8. The pro­gram sets forth more about the long-term plan­ning that went into the devel­op­ment of True World’s oper­a­tions. The Uni­fi­ca­tion Church’s mass wed­dings have aid­ed the growth of True World Foods by per­mit­ting Japan­ese church mem­bers to become Amer­i­can cit­i­zens and there­by escape the restric­tions on how much fish non-cit­i­zens could catch in U.S. ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

“In the late 1970s, Moon laid out a plan to build seafood oper­a­tions in all 50 states as part of what he called ‘the ocean­ic prov­i­dence.’ This dream of har­vest­ing the sea would help fund the church, feed the world and save the Amer­i­can fish­ing indus­try, Moon said. He even sug­gest­ed that the church’s mass wed­dings could play a role in the busi­ness plan by mak­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens out of Japan­ese mem­bers of the move­ment. This would help them avoid fish­ing restric­tions applied to for­eign­ers. ‘A few years ago the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment set up a 200-mile lim­it for off­shore fish­ing by for­eign boats,’ Moon said in the 1980 ‘Way of Tuna’ ser­mon. But by mar­ry­ing Japan­ese mem­bers to Amer­i­cans, ‘we are not for­eign­ers; there­fore Japan­ese broth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those matched to Amer­i­cans, are becom­ing ..... lead­ers for fish­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion’ of his move­men­t’s busi­ness­es. Sushi’s pop­u­lar­i­ty had flow­ered enough by 1986 for Moon to gloat that Amer­i­cans who once thought Japan­ese were ‘just like ani­mals, eat­ing raw fish,’ were now ‘pay­ing a great deal of mon­ey, eat­ing at expen­sive sushi restau­rants.’ He rec­om­mend­ed that his flock open ‘1,000 restau­rants’ in Amer­i­ca.”

(Idem.)

9. Again, note that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has boat build­ing and main­te­nance com­pa­nies, to facil­i­tate the ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion of the sushi oper­a­tion.

“In fash­ion­ing a chain of busi­ness­es that would stretch from the ocean to restau­rant tables across Amer­i­ca, Moon and his fol­low­ers cre­at­ed a struc­ture unique­ly able to cap­i­tal­ize on the nation’s grow­ing appetite for sushi and fresh fish. Some of the busi­ness start-up funds came from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. In a sev­en-month peri­od from Octo­ber 1976 to May 1977, Moon signed some of the near­ly $1 mil­lion in checks used to estab­lish the fish­ing busi­ness, accord­ing to a 1978 con­gres­sion­al report on alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­eties by Moon’s church. After acquir­ing an ail­ing boat­mak­ing oper­a­tion, Mas­ter Marine, Moon and his fol­low­ers turned their atten­tion to estab­lish­ing the next link in the net­work. Church mem­bers who saw fish­ing as their call­ing took to the seas, many pow­ered by Mas­ter Marine boats. Moon’s Ocean Church would bring togeth­er mem­bers and poten­tial con­verts for 40-day tuna fish­ing trips every sum­mer in 80 boats he bought for his fol­low­ers. Many of the tour­na­ments took place off the coast of Glouces­ter, Mass., by no coin­ci­dence one of the first homes to a church-affil­i­at­ed seafood pro­cess­ing plant. Moon proud­ly declared in his ‘Way of Tuna’ speech that ‘Glouces­ter is almost a Moonie town now!’ (The church has since reject­ed the term Moonies as deroga­to­ry.)”

(Idem.)

10. “Some­times work­ing sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, Moon affil­i­ates and fol­low­ers bought large chunks of the key fish­ing towns–in each case ini­tial­ly spark­ing anger and sus­pi­cion from long­time res­i­dents. The church and its mem­bers cre­at­ed an uproar when they bought a vil­la that had been a retire­ment home run by Roman Catholic nuns. Moon was hanged in effi­gy in the local har­bor. Even­tu­al­ly, such resis­tance with­ered away. In Bay­ou La Batre, Ala., Rus­sell Stein­er was among com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers who clashed with the new­com­ers. But like many in the town, Stein­er has mel­lowed con­sid­er­ably since the church’s arrival. ‘They have been very active in the com­mu­ni­ty and are very nice peo­ple, actu­al­ly,’ he said. The Alaba­ma shrimp busi­ness is among the largest in the Gulf of Mex­i­co, and the near­by boat-build­ing plant has not only built more than 300 boats, but also done repairs on the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy ships, accord­ing to fed­er­al doc­u­ments.”

(Idem.)

11. The scale and vol­ume of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church fish­ing busi­ness is remark­able:

“And the fish busi­ness­es have thrived. Com­pa­ny offi­cials say the whole­sale dis­tri­b­u­tion arm, True World Foods, had rev­enue of $250 mil­lion last year. Accord­ing to True World Foods, its fleet of 230 refrig­er­at­ed trucks deliv­ers raw fish to 7,000 sushi and fine-din­ing restau­rants nation­wide. Dozens of those trucks leave each day from the Elk Grove Vil­lage ware­house, one of 22 dis­tri­b­u­tion facil­i­ties around the coun­try. True World Foods’ Alas­ka plant process­es more than 20 mil­lion pounds of salmon, cod and pol­lock each year, the com­pa­ny says. Its Inter­na­tion­al Lob­ster oper­a­tion in Glouces­ter ships monk­fish and lob­ster around the world from a 25,000-square-foot cold stor­age facil­i­ty that is among the largest on the East Coast. And it is again in an expan­sion­ist mood. True World recent­ly opened up shop in Eng­land and estab­lished offices in Japan and Korea, set­ting its sights on the world’s biggest mar­ket for sushi.”

(Idem.)

12. “When Takeshi Yashiro arrived in Chica­go in 1980 to help set up one of the ear­li­est out­posts of the fish­ing empire, the area had just a hand­ful of sushi joints. That num­ber has bal­looned to more than 200 restau­rants statewide, and Yashiro’s fish house has flour­ished. The son of an Epis­co­palian Japan­ese min­is­ter, he immi­grat­ed to the U.S. and joined the church as a stu­dent in San Fran­cis­co. On July 1, 1982, Moon blessed Yashiro and his bride along with more than 2,000 oth­er cou­ples in one of his mass wed­ding cer­e­monies, in New York City’s Madi­son Square Gar­den. The Rain­bow Fish House that Yashiro and fel­low church mem­bers found­ed on Chicago’s North­west Side has become not only the city’s dom­i­nant sushi sup­pli­er but also the nation’s. The fish house became True World Foods, which buys so much tuna from around the world that it has sev­en peo­ple in Chica­go sole­ly ded­i­cat­ed to sourc­ing and pric­ing the best grades.”

(Idem.)

13. Anoth­er advan­tage enjoyed by True World Foods is the fact that its sales force is flu­ent in the Asian lan­guages spo­ken by many first-gen­er­a­tion immi­grant restau­ra­teurs.

“One of True World’s advan­tages is that its sales force speaks Chi­nese, Kore­an and Japan­ese, mak­ing it easy for first-gen­er­a­tion eth­nic restau­rant own­ers to do busi­ness with them. ‘It’s kind of tough to com­pete in this indus­try with a com­pa­ny that is so glob­al, has a major pres­ence in almost every mar­ket and that is dri­ven by reli­gious fer­vor,’ said Bill Dugan, who has been in the fish busi­ness for almost 30 years and owns the Fish Guy Mar­ket on Elston Avenue, near the orig­i­nal Rain­bow shop. ‘We should all be so blessed.’ But not all of True World’s employ­ees are church mem­bers. Tuna buy­er Eddie Lin recent­ly left True World for For­tune Fish Co., a local rival. Lin said his for­mer work­place was not overt­ly reli­gious, but he added that as a non-church mem­ber he felt his abil­i­ty to advance was lim­it­ed. ‘You can feel the dif­fer­ence between the way they see mem­bers and non-mem­bers,’ Lin said. While dis­put­ing such asser­tions, Yashiro not­ed that new employ­ees ‘have to know that the founder is the founder of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. … It’s a very clear dis­tinc­tion between join­ing the church or not join­ing the church. There’s no dis­crim­i­na­tion, but I think our cul­ture is def­i­nite­ly based on our faith.’ ”

(Idem.)

14. “It’s that faith that makes some uneasy. Wang Kim, a Chica­go-area youth min­istry direc­tor and Moon crit­ic, was cer­tain he could find local Kore­an Chris­t­ian sushi restau­ra­teurs who did­n’t use True World because they might con­sid­er his views hereti­cal. As Kim said, Moon ‘says that he is the Mes­si­ah, and we hate that.’ But Kim called back emp­ty-hand­ed. ‘I checked with sev­er­al of my friends,” he said, ‘and they know it is from Moon but they have to use [them because] they have to give qual­i­ty to their cus­tomers.’ The sheer suc­cess of the ven­ture has left lin­ger­ing ques­tions even in the minds of Moon’s ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­ers. Yashiro, the Chica­go pio­neer who now heads True World Foods, remem­bers ded­i­cat­ing his career and life 26 years ago to achiev­ing Moon’s dream, which includ­ed solv­ing world hunger. But that part of Moon’s grand vision has yet to mate­ri­al­ize. ‘I was won­der­ing if we are real­ly here to solve the world’s hunger,’ Yashiro said. ‘Every day I pray on it.’ He still hopes True World Foods even­tu­al­ly will help end hunger. But until then, he said, his role will be to grow the busi­ness and make mon­ey.”

(Idem.)

15. In FTR#84, we exam­ined the pro­found con­nec­tions between Moon’s orga­ni­za­tion and the Bush fam­i­ly. The lat­est mem­ber of the fam­i­ly to fall into Moon’s orbit is Neil Bush, broth­er of the cur­rent seat­ed Pres­i­dent.

“ ‘Those who stray from the heav­en­ly way,’ the own­er of the flag­ship Repub­li­can news­pa­per the Wash­ing­ton Times admon­ished an audi­ence in Taipei on Fri­day, ‘will be pun­ished.’ This ‘heav­en­ly way,’ the Rev. Sun Myung Moon explained, demands a 51-mile under­wa­ter high­way span­ning Alas­ka and Rus­sia. Sit­ting in the front row: Neil Bush, the broth­er of the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Kore­an giant of the reli­gious right who owns the Wash­ing­ton Times, is on a 100-city speak­ing tour to pro­mote his $200 bil­lion ‘Peace King Tun­nel’ dream. As he describes it, the tun­nel would be both a mon­u­ment to his mag­nif­i­cence, and a totem to his prophe­cy of a uni­fied Plan­et Earth. In this vision, the Unit­ed Nations would be rein­vent­ed as an instru­ment of God’s plan, and democ­ra­cy and sex­u­al free­dom would crum­ble in the face of this faith-based glo­ry.”

(“Neil Bush Meets the Mes­si­ah” by John Goren­feld; Alter­Net; 12/5/2005.)

16. “The name Peace King Tun­nel would allude to the title of author­i­ty to which Moon, 86, lays claim, and to which U.S. con­gress­men paid respect on Capi­tol Hill in last year’s con­tro­ver­sial ‘Crown of Peace’ coro­na­tion rit­u­al. Moon’s lob­by­ing cam­paign is ‘ambi­tious and dif­fuse,’ as the D.C. news­pa­per The Hill report­ed last year, and the sheer range of guests revealed just how many Pacif­ic Rim polit­i­cal lead­ers the Times own­er has won over, includ­ing Fil­ipino and Tai­wanese politi­cians. And the head of the Ari­zona GOP attend­ed a recent stop in San Fran­cis­co. But per­haps the most sur­pris­ing VIP to tag along is Neil Bush, George H.W. Bush’s youngest and most way­ward son, who made both the Philip­pines and Tai­wan legs of the jour­ney, accord­ing to reports in news­pa­pers from those coun­tries and state­ments from Moon’s Fam­i­ly Fed­er­a­tion. . . .”

(Idem.)

17. Moon’s val­ues are fun­da­men­tal­ly diver­gent from tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples.

” . . . Moon has fre­quent­ly gone on the record against West­ern-style democ­ra­cy and indi­vid­u­al­ism, call­ing them results of the fall of Adam. ‘There are three guid­ing prin­ci­ples for the world to choose from: democ­ra­cy, Com­mu­nism and Godism,’ he said in a 1987 ser­mon. ‘It is clear that democ­ra­cy as the Unit­ed States knows and prac­tices it can­not be the mod­el for the world.’ ‘Indi­vid­u­al­ism,’ he also said at the speech — enti­tled ‘I Will Fol­low With Grat­i­tude And Obe­di­ence’ — ‘is what God hates most and what Satan likes best.’ ”

(Idem.)

18. More about the Bush fam­i­ly’s involve­ment with the Moon orga­ni­za­tion: “Neil isn’t the only Bush to attend Moon events. In 1996, his father, Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush, trav­eled to Buenos Aires with the Rev­erend in one of sev­er­al such fundrais­ing expe­di­tions.

‘The 41st pres­i­dent, who told Argen­tine pres­i­dent Car­los Men­em that he had joined Moon in Buenos Aires for the mon­ey, had actu­al­ly known the Kore­an rea­son­ably well for decades,’ writes for­mer top GOP strate­gist Kevin Phillips in his book Amer­i­can Dynasty. ‘Their rela­tion­ship went back to the over­lap between Bush’s one-year tenure as CIA direc­tor (1976) and the arrival in Wash­ing­ton of Moon, whose Uni­fi­ca­tion Church was wide­ly report­ed to be a front group for the South Kore­an Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency.’ Moon and his aides have called such claims bogus, say­ing his accusers were con­trolled by ‘Satan’ to dis­tract from his cam­paign to destroy com­mu­nism. . . .”

(Idem.)

19. When con­tem­plat­ing din­ing on sushi from Moon’s True World Foods or con­sid­er­ing the Bush fam­i­ly’s close asso­ci­a­tion with the Moon group, con­sid­er the pro­found link between Japan­ese fas­cism and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. As not­ed in para­graph #5, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church appears to be an exten­sion of the Japan­ese patri­ot­ic and ultra­na­tion­al­ist soci­eties through the decades and around the world. Two of the key ear­ly per­son­al­i­ties in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church were Ryoichi Sasakawa and Yoshio Kodama. Both were Japan­ese war crim­i­nals and both played a key role in recov­er­ing World War II booty loot­ed under the Gold­en Lily pro­gram. Much of the Japan­ese Gold­en Lily loot that was stashed in the Philip­pines was even­tu­al­ly recov­ered by Japan­ese fas­cists, work­ing in tan­dem with Fer­di­nand Mar­cos. Sasakawa and Kodama were two of the promi­nent fig­ures involved in recov­er­ing the Philip­pines loot. The pro­gram sets forth Sasakawa’s role in recov­er­ing the gold.

“Only in the mid-1960’s, when Fer­di­nand Mar­cos began mak­ing onshore and off­shore recov­ery deals with the Japan­ese, was offi­cial hos­til­i­ty relaxed, and Japan­ese began com­ing back to the Philip­pines in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers to hunt for trea­sure. Small groups came to the Cagayan Val­ley every year. One team searched around the Bam­bang ceme­tery that includ­ed Tunnel‑8 and Tunnel‑9. Ben did not rec­og­nize any­one in the group. One day they were gone. Vil­lagers found a tree by the ceme­tery that had been cut down dur­ing the night with a chain saw, expos­ing the inside of the tree trunk. There they clear­ly saw where sev­er­al gold bars had been hid­den, leav­ing their impres­sion in the wood as the tree grew around the bars.”

(Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [HC]; Copy­right 2003 by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–85984-542–8; p. 158.)

20. “At the end of 1968, Pres­i­dent Mar­cos sent a team to Tokyo to make a deal for more effec­tive joint recov­er­ies. The team includ­ed Lieu­tenant Colonel Flo­renti­no Vil­lacru­sis, a senior intel­li­gence offi­cer; Brigadier Gen­er­al Onofre T. Ramos, comp­trol­ler of the Philip­pine armed forces; and two oth­er offi­cers. Their mis­sion was to acquire a set of Gold­en Lily trea­sure maps in return for a share to Japan of what­ev­er Mar­cos recov­ered. If Tokyo did not coop­er­ate, Mar­cos warned that he would close down Japan­ese com­pa­nies all over the islands.”

(Idem.)

21. “In his first two years as pres­i­dent, Mar­cos had autho­rized off­shore recov­er­ies by a syn­di­cate of Japan­ese and Kore­an gang­sters, head­ed by Kodama and Machii Hisayu­ki, head of the Tosei-kai. Anoth­er part­ner was bil­lion­aire fix­er Sasakawa Ryoichi, anoth­er of Kodama’s Sug­amo Prison cell­mates, who staged speed­boat races, one of Japan’s favorite bet­ting sports and a con­ve­nient way to laun­der mon­ey. His true wealth came from secret deals with Pres­i­dent Sukarno and Pres­i­dent Mar­cos to share in the recov­ery of war loot in Indone­sia and the Philip­pines. ‘I was very close to Mar­cos,’ Sasakawa told jour­nal­ists, ‘long before he became pres­i­dent.’ He point­ed Mar­cos at sev­er­al sites, includ­ing the sunken cruis­er Nachii in Mani­la Bay, and in return was allowed to build ceme­ter­ies and memo­ri­als for Japan­ese war dead in the Philip­pines, on prop­er­ty that just hap­pened to include Gold­en Lily sites. ‘I per­son­al­ly donat­ed the biggest cul­tur­al hall in [the Philip­pines]’, Sasakawa boast­ed, ‘as well as sup­plied the cement.’ Forty thou­sand sacks, to be pre­cise.”

(Ibid.; pp. 158–159.)

22. Kodama’s rise with­in the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment (he was a rear admi­ral) was aid­ed by his role in loot­ing the Asian under­world on behalf of Japan.

“Six months before the rape of Nanking, Gen­er­al Doi­hara called in the one man who could take full charge of loot­ing Chi­na’s under­world — Kodama Yoshio, Japan’s top gang­ster. Nor­mal­ly based in Tokyo, Kodama moved to Shang­hai, where he became Doi­hara’s chief liai­son with Boss Tu and the Green Gang. Before the war end­ed, Kodama was Gold­en Lily’s most effec­tive nego­tia­tor with gang­sters in Indochi­na, Siam, Malaya, Bur­ma, the Philip­pines and Indone­sia, hold­ing their feet to the fire or, when nec­es­sary, shoot­ing them. Kodama was short, burly, squat, and had the meaty face of a pro­fes­sion­al fight­er, with thick lips and heavy scar tis­sue. His fin­gers were knob­by from karate, and could crush a lar­ynx. The son of a failed busi­ness­man in Nihon­mat­su, at age nine he was sent off to his aunt in Korea, where he worked in a steel mill. At twelve he fled back to Japan, where he was adopt­ed by yakuza who put him to work beat­ing up labor orga­niz­ers. By 1931 he was a favorite of Black Drag­on boss Toya­ma, impli­cat­ed in the attempt­ed mur­der of cab­i­net min­is­ters. Sen­tenced to prison, Kodama wrote a mem­oir that became a hand­book for fanat­ics. After his release, Toya­ma sent him to Manchuria to do wet work for Gen­er­al Doi­hara. In Tokyo a few months lat­er, he was jailed for plot­ting to bomb impe­r­i­al advi­sors, stay­ing in jail until 1937. He was sprung from jail by Doi­hara in April 1937, on the con­di­tion that he devot­ed his vio­lent ener­gies to loot­ing Chi­na’s under­world. This epiphany, the trans­for­ma­tion of Kodama from thug to super- patri­ot, was sug­gest­ed by Black Drag­on’s Toya­ma, whose own stature as a patri­ot was affirmed in 1924 when he was a guest at Emper­or Hiro­hi­to’s wed­ding. In Novem­ber 1937, after six months of brief­in­gs in the For­eign Min­istry, Kodama arrived in Shang­hai to deal with the prob­lem of care­less­ness. In a post­war mem­oir, he denounced ‘the wan­ton spend­ing of secret funds, on wine, women and debauch­ery ... in every city under Japan­ese occu­pa­tion’. And the care­less destruc­tion of valu­able objects: ‘... in every tem­ple and shrine ... in the occu­pied areas, I found the heads of Bud­dhas ... bro­ken or cut off’. If sol­diers, most­ly une­d­u­cat­ed farm boys, were too stu­pid to steal the whole Bud­dha, they must be shot. While Kodama’s lieu­tenants put these orders into effect, he spent his days tak­ing con­trol of alco­hol, drugs, and oth­er prime com­modi­ties. All pro­ceeds were divert­ed from Chi­nese rack­e­teers to Gold­en Lily, minus a han­dling charge for Kodama him­self. Ulti­mate­ly, Kodama was respon­si­ble to Prince Chichibu, and to the throne. . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 40–41.)

23. Kodama’s influ­ence went well beyond Japan and Asia. Kodama worked very close­ly with the CIA dur­ing the same time peri­od in which he became one of the ear­ly prime-movers with­in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. Much of the wealth that Kodama accu­mu­lat­ed through his wartime loot­ing was even­tu­al­ly merged with oth­er funds derived from the Gold­en Lily pro­gram, such as the M‑Fund.

“Anoth­er great for­tune dis­cov­ered by U.S. intel­li­gence ser­vices in 1946 was $13-bil­lion in war loot amassed by under­world god­fa­ther Kodama Yoshio who, as a ‘rear admi­ral’ in the Impe­r­i­al Navy work­ing with Gold­en Lily in Chi­na and South­east Asia, was in charge of plun­der­ing the Asian under­world and rack­e­teers. He was also in charge of Japan’s wartime drug trade through­out Asia. After the war to get out of Sug­amo Prison and avoid pros­e­cu­tion for war crimes, Kodama gave $100-mil­lion to the CIA, which was added to the M‑Fund’s cof­fers. Kodama then per­son­al­ly financed the cre­ation of the two polit­i­cal par­ties that merged into Japan’s rul­ing Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (LDP), strong­ly backed to this day by Wash­ing­ton.”

(Ibid.; p. 8.)

24. Kodama was on excel­lent terms with Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, who assist­ed with the acqui­si­tion of the $13-bil­lion fund Kodama even­tu­al­ly com­bined with the M‑Fund. Kodama was the king­pin of the Japan­ese drug trade dur­ing, and after, World War II. The drug trade was one of the pri­ma­ry sources of Kodama’s largesse.

“Anoth­er source of under­ground funds was Kodama, who was report­ed to have amassed some $13-bil­lion in war loot for his per­son­al use. This includ­ed two truck-loads of dia­monds, gold bars, plat­inum ingots, radi­um, cop­per, and oth­er vital mate­ri­als. In order to cur­ry favor with MacArthur’s men, Skukan Bun­shun said at war’s end ‘Kodama had a good por­tion of [his] valu­ables trans­port­ed to the vault of the Impe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly in the Impe­r­i­al Palace.’ Despite his life­long involve­ment in mur­der, kid­nap­ping, drugs and extor­tion, Kodama is said to have been regard­ed by Emper­or Hiro­hi­to as a true patri­ot, pos­si­bly because of the great sums he gen­er­at­ed for Gold­en Lily. This may explain why Japan’s top gang­ster was per­mit­ted to hide some of his loot in palace vaults. But it goes deep­er to include nar­cotics.”

(Ibid.; p. 108.)

25. “In the spring of 1945, Kodama made a quick trip to Tai­wan to see that its many hero­in fac­to­ries were dis­man­tled for return to Japan, along with remain­ing stocks of hero­in and mor­phine. On his return, Kodama was assigned to be a spe­cial advi­sor to the emper­or’s uncle, Prince Higashiku­ni, who served as Japan’s prime min­is­ter briefly at the start of the U.S. occu­pa­tion. Accord­ing to Kodama’s own mem­oir, imme­di­ate­ly after the sur­ren­der, Higashiku­ni had ‘two or three of us coun­cilors arrange a meet­ing and secret­ly, unknown to his cab­i­net min­is­ters, [Higashiku­ni] vis­it­ed Gen­er­al MacArthur in Yoko­hama.’ Kodama pro­vides no details of what tran­spired at this meet­ing, or whether he accom­pa­nied the prince.”

(Idem.)

26. Again, Kodama worked very close­ly with the CIA.

“Kodama then spent two years in Sug­amo Prison as an indict­ed war crim­i­nal, but was mag­i­cal­ly released in mid-1948 when he made a deal with Gen­er­al Willough­by to give the CIA $100-mil­lion (equal to $1‑billion in today’s val­ues.) This pay­ment bought Kodama his free­dom from prison and from any pros­e­cu­tion for war crimes. The mon­ey was placed in one of the secret slush funds con­trolled by the CIA sta­tion at the U.S. Embassy. Sub­se­quent­ly, Kodama was put direct­ly on the CIA pay­roll, where he remained for many years, until his death in 1984. Tad Szulc of The New York Times wrote, ‘Kodama had a work­ing rela­tion­ship with the CIA.’ Chalmers John­son said Kodama was ‘prob­a­bly the CIA’s chief asset in Japan.’ ”

(Idem.)

27. Kodama’s pre­em­i­nent role in the Asian hero­in trade over­lapped his ser­vice on behalf of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.

“While lit­er­al­ly an employ­ee of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment, Kodama con­tin­ued to over­see Japan’s post­war drug trade. Hero­in labs were moved back not only from Tai­wan, but from North Chi­na, Manchuria and Korea. Chi­nese who had col­lab­o­rat­ed with Japan in drug pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, were giv­en sanc­tu­ary and began oper­at­ing from Japan­ese soil. Two of the three major play­ers in Asian nar­cotics soon died: Nation­al­ist Chi­na’s gen­er­al Tai Li was assas­si­nat­ed in a 1946 plane crash; Shang­hai god­fa­ther Tu Yueh-sheng died in Hong Kong of nat­ur­al caus­es in 1951. Kodama was left Asi­a’s top druglo­rd, while on the U.S. pay­roll. This could have been embar­rass­ing, for Japan’s dom­i­nant role in nar­cotics was wide­ly known and undis­put­ed, but a Cold War hush descend­ed over it like an Arc­tic white­out. Dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, U.S. pro­pa­gan­da char­ac­ter­ized Asi­a’s drug trade as exclu­sive­ly the enter­prise of left­ists and com­mu­nist agents. In truth it was dom­i­nat­ed by Kodama in Japan, and by Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang through the KMT opi­um armies based in the Gold­en Tri­an­gle, who were under the direct con­trol of the Gen­er­alis­si­mo’s son, Chi­ang Ching-kuo, the KMT chief of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence at that time. (The two top KMT opi­um war­lords in the Gold­en Tri­an­gle, Gen­er­al Tuan and Gen­er­al Li spoke to us open­ly of this.)”

(Ibid.; pp. 108–109.)

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